New study suggest aerobic exercise is useless for those with “unfitness” genes
| 05 February 2010
A controversial new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology is raising eyebrows amongst the scientific community and triggering a typical sensationalized reaction from the media. The study, lead by James Timmons, evaluated the fitness improvements in around 600 volunteers who were cycling at a moderate intensity for 30 minutes a day.
The researchers found that some participants improved their fitness levels by 10% whereas the fitness levels of about 20% of them barely changed. The researcher then examined this 20% and found a group of genes that affect oxygen uptake that they believe could be responsible for the lack of results from exercise. They suggest that these “unfitness genes” could be stopping 20% of the population from burning fat off during aerobic exercise.The breathing Exercise That Gives You More Energy
| 29 January 2010
Just like a fire being deprived of oxygen causes the fire to burn out, when you are running low in oxygen you begin to feel tired and burnt out. You often feel tired when your blood oxygen levels lower slightly as a result of shallow breathing. When you take a breath you may be incorrectly expanding the top part of your chest. This results in inflating predominantly the top smaller section of your lungs so your lungs don't fully inflate during a shallow breath.
This may be okay while you are relatively sedentary. As you begin to do things that require more energy throughout your day, you may be so used to this more inefficient shallow breathing that you continue to take short shallow breaths.
When you collapse into your chair or your bed and you let out this tired sigh, it is your body innately trying to get more oxygen by taking a deeper breath. If you are regularly feeling tired, it may mean that you need to train yourself to breathe deeper.
There are many effective courses like The Buteyko Method that you can attend that will help to train you to breathe deeper to alleviate the feelings of tiredness. The challenge is that most of the time when you are tired, you are probably flat out with work or family commitments and don't have the time to spare. You're not only tired and have "run out of gas", you've also run out of time.
Fortunately when you are tired and pressed for time there is something that you can do at work that can help alleviate the tiredness and help train you to breathe deeper...
Should You Exercise When You Have A Cold Or Flu?
| 11 December 2009
You have just started on a fitness kick and you wake up one morning with what seems to be a really bad cold. You are coughing and sneezing, and it is hard to breathe.
Should you work out?
And if you do, should you push yourself as hard as ever or take it easy? Will exercise have no effect, or make you feel better or worse?
It is a question, surprisingly enough, that stumps many health professionals but more seriously it often derails attempts of those trying to get into the habit of regularly exercising.
It turns out that two little-known studies that were published a decade ago in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise addressed this question.Results from the studies were so much in favor of exercise that the researchers themselves were surprised.
Why exercising in moderation is bad for your health
| 13 October 2009
A refreshing cooling breeze and some late afternoon cloud cover over Mooloolaba beach provided an ideal climate and location for exercise. Judging by the numbers of people on the beach in their exercise gear, I wasn’t alone in thinking it was the perfect time for exercise.
As I began my run I soon realized that over 95% of people who thought they were exercising on the beach were not actually exercising. Technically they were moving (they were walking) but to me exercising is when you engage in physical activity with enough intensity and for long enough so that it improves your physical fitness.
When your time is limited as is generally the case with most working families today, you want to ensure that your time spent on exercising is going to give you the best reward for effort. Unfortunately, new research is showing that by following the current exercise recommendations you will miss out on many of the health benefits that you can get from exercise.
The study published in the October 2008 edition of The Official Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine1 by Dr. Paul Williams is highlighting the accumulating evidence that important health benefits accrue at greater exercise doses and greater exercise intensities than currently recommended.
Burn fat three to four times faster while exercising less
| 01 July 2009
I know that it sounds like a claim from a late night infomercial but I guarantee that I have no pills, shakes, potions or machines to sell you. What I do have is the latest research results that highlight the ineffectiveness of many forms of exercise.
In an effort to improve the health of their workplace many corporate health programs have started incentives to encourage exercise amongst their workers. Such efforts have included issuing their workers with pedometers and encouraging walking to work as well as encouraging participation in low intensity exercise. These efforts certainly increase workers participation in exercise but the problem is that it doesn’t mean that their exercise program will be getting any results.
The problem is that many employees in a corporate health programs opt for low intensity activities like walking thinking that exercising in moderation counts for valid exercise. But recent research is highlighting that encouraging low intensity exercise won’t stop expanding waistlines from hurting company bottom lines. It adds to the mounting evidence that shows that the intensity of your exercise is the key to a corporate exercise program that gives health- promoting results.
A research team from the University of Virginia studied a group of 27 obese middle-aged women for 16 weeks.